


The Last First Time

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Magical Realism, Multiple Timelines, Past Life Character Death, Past Life Suicide, Reincarnation, Romance, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:58:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3872968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock meet in the lab at Bart's. It's not their <i>first</i> first meeting, but God willing, it will be their last. They've lived a dozen lives already, each ending with one of them dying early and tragically. The trajectory of all these past lives has brought them together again, at St. Bart's, in London, in 221B. John is convinced that <i>this</i> Sherlock has it in him to change their fate and give them peace at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning to post short chapters, fairly frequently, and honestly have no idea how long this will be. Kind of experimental - but you'll see a lot of "canon" events intermingled with pieces of their past lives. Past angst, UST and romance - a bit of everything - but leading to peace at last.

John has been pierced by wicked arrows, has fallen from a castle turret, has watched helplessly from the deck of a ship, held back by stronger arms than his own, as Sherlock sank beneath the chilled waters of the North Sea. He is a hunter, a soldier, a warrior, a guard. They meet when they’re grown men, with lives established, set in their ways. John is sometimes married, often attached. Sherlock is always alone. 

They are quick to succumb to the gravitational pull of the other, recognizing each other by voice, by feel, by accidental glance. The flood of memories is unleashed only then, shared lives reaching back six hundred years, to days of friendship, kinship, joining lives separate, unequal, but balanced one against the other.

They are the same men, time and again. They don’t dwell on their pasts once they find each other and plunge forward into old forgotten ways. Tempting fate, staring death in the eyes, knowing there is more to come– always more – across the pale, beyond the grave. 

They endure two lifetimes before they dare speak of it. _I knew you…before._ John thinks it the work of the stars; Sherlock thinks it an enigma.

They are cursed. They are blessed.

They are tired.

Sherlock thinks. He is a scholar, a scientist, an artist, a loner.

John acts. He is a devoted caretaker, a trusted friend and confident, a fierce protector. 

Always, John rises through the chaotic masses from below while Sherlock descends from above, down from money, from power, from position. Their stations in life are far removed, as if the forces that be seek to make their first meeting as unlikely as possible. Their accidental touch, their mutual discovery, seems left to chance. 

They chase shadows from their previous lives, stop to listen to the wind, press ears against the heartbeat of the past.

They tear through life in the danger zone, take on challenges too big for ordinary men. Mortals who die, not once, but time and again, the one left behind only half the man he was before. 

They go forward in time, a step, a hop, each life lived on the heels of the former. Contiguous, or nearly so, but disconnected – Australia, the States, the Yucatan, Mongolia, Rome. No matter the language they speak, the family they keep, their separate lives slot together when they meet and they remain connected, the initial relationship morphing into something more – more equitable, more balanced, more intimate. Master and servant turned into colleagues, cohorts, friends.

For a time. Too brief a time.

Today John is an army doctor, invalided out, trying to get back on his feet in London. A fortuitous encounter with an old friend leads him to a lab near the morgue at St. Bart’s hospital. A man, conducting some sort of experiment, needs a phone, and John offers his own. He holds it out, their fingers brush, their eyes lock, and the jolt of recognition capsizes the room.

It will take some time to reorient themselves in this reality, to become acclimated to the weight of memories, the disconcerting ghosts of the past. But for now, with other eyes upon them, they must go through the motions with the weight of six centuries pressing them into the floor. 

Sherlock looks away first, takes a fortifying breath, and proceeds to _deduce_ the newcomer. Dissects him – cuts him up and rearranges him. Impresses the _hell_ out of him.

Then, in the next breath, invites him to share his flat.

Something is different. It has never – never – been so easy. There have always been obstacles. They have always had to fabricate, to make excuses, to dissimulate.

Never before _could_ they have shared a flat. Not with their stations in life so disparate. Not when John was settled with a wife, or committed to military service. Not when Sherlock was watched so carefully – by his family, his country, by the crown itself.

Until now.

And John knows – knows in his heart of hearts – that this man, in this life, will not let this puzzle play itself out as it always does. Won’t kneel at his side helplessly as he gasps for his last breath, black arrow in his chest. Won’t sink to his death beneath cold ocean waters and leave John alone and adrift.

That this incarnation of this man – brilliant, self-possessed, brighter than the sun – will have an answer.

Will stop this madness.

Will solve this puzzle.

Will give them rest.

His hope rests there – as does his trust.

ooOOOoo

They part briefly, meet again over dinner.

Sherlock calls it _the assimilation_. Working the awakened memories of hundreds of years into the here and now. Staying afloat among the flotsam and jetsam, working out who each is now, how they mean to go on.

Sherlock leans across the table. His face is eerily shadowed in the candlelight, and John meets his eyes, heart constricting with the echoing pain of the last goodbye. He holds his breath. 

“John – Florence. Do you remember Florence?”

It is difficult to string the memories in order, to remember the time before there were memories. It’s easier to recall similar conversations – conversations like this. But never before does he recall this fire, this intensity, in his fellow traveler, in the man who journeys through time, time and again, with him.

John remembers.

_Florence._

John – Sherlock’s servant. Sherlock forced to marry the daughter of his father’s oldest friend. John had kindled an affair with her to ruin her reputation, to free Sherlock. 

Sherlock, free. John – dead at the hand of the woman’s brother.

“I used you.”

John nods.

“I always use you.”

John shakes his head. “Not always,” he reminds Sherlock. He searches for the name, the place. “Shiloh.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen. He stares at John, face pale. When he repeats the word, his voice is a whisper, and his eyes are far away.

_”Shiloh.”_

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiloh - Tennessee, USA - April, 1862 and London, 150 years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiloh refers to a battle in the American Civil War - April 1862, in Tennessee.

CHAPTER 2

He is a farmer turned soldier, a man of thirty-one. Attached to the Illinois 48th, he finds himself in Tennessee in April of 1862. His young wife remains behind in Old Shawneetown, living with her parents while he is away at war.

The fighting at Shiloh is fierce and bloody, worse than anything he’s seen in the year he’s been away. He’s a good soldier – he does what he’s told, when he’s told to do it. There’s nothing for it. It’s senseless, and it doesn’t do to think in the middle of a charge, to consider that there might be other options. He’s a boy in blue like all the others, and he’s just as scared as the youngsters of eighteen who fight beside him.

Sometimes, he’s not sure what he’s fighting for.

Here in Tennessee, they’re told it’s all about control of the rivers.

The Ohio runs beside his farm in Illinois. It feeds his fields and blesses the earth with its bounty. It meets the Mighty Mississippi at Cairo and flows to the sea. John cares little for rivers as a rule – he’s a man of the earth, his roots deep and strong.

Doing what he’s told to do, when he’s told to do it, does not keep him safe today. He’s shot in the shoulder while defending the road with his brothers in arms. There are so many casualties in this bloody battle that the injured, the dead, lie where they fall. The earth is soft beneath his body, the weight of his fallen comrades heavy on his back.

~~~

He is the son of a farmer – a wealthy farmer whose family owns half the county. He has no interest in the land, in the earth, or in things that grow on it. He has escaped to the war, to the field hospitals, to the medical teams that dig out bullets, bandage wounds and amputate limbs. He is fascinated with the human body, and its workings, and the pieces that make a living, breathing man. He is not a doctor, not a surgeon, but he’s assisted in countless procedures, has dissected feet and legs and hands and eyes. He sees disease, decay, infection, death, remaining always a hair’s breadth away from the wrong side of a deadly bullet

He is twenty-one years old.

He has the fortune – some would say misfortune – of being here, at the battle they’ll call Shiloh.

~~~

John is one of the last ones pulled from the field. Covered as he was by his fallen friend, he lay quietly for hours while the battle played out around him. They think him dead, and make to dump him on the cart, but he winces, opens his eyes, and soon finds himself on a stretcher, borne away quietly into the night.

He sleeps in fits and starts, his shoulder a nest of stinging nettles, a bed of fire and ice. The pain sinks into his bones, leaves him cold in the chill April air. They have dug out the bullet, and with it shards of bone. He drifts in and out of consciousness, wishes he could see his wife one last time, walk his plowed fields, watch fireflies blink out over the grass.

All pleasant and melancholy thoughts vanish when familiar hands touch his shoulder and forehead.

“Are you awake?”

It is nearly too much, this echo-burst of sensation, this tidal wave of memories. He is too sick to right himself, to make sense of the onslaught. The hand on his shoulder grips too tightly but he welcomes the pain, opens his eyes, stares into the stricken face of the other.

His tears fall unbidden as he reads the message in those eyes.

~~~

The soldier lost too much blood, was given too much alcohol, too much chloroform. Surgery was too late to stave off infection, the shattered bone too fragmented to repair.

The man is dying.

He is just another soldier, a compact man with farmer’s hands and sun-bleached hair, until he rests his hand on the man’s fevered face. He is jolted out of his skin as awareness crushes him, and he falls to his knees at the side of the cot, gripping his hand, suddenly desperate to change fate.

He throws himself into the task of saving this man. He neglects his other charges, battles fever and infection with every tool he knows. There are rare moments of lucidity when his patient knows him, quiet moments filled with unvoiced goodbyes.

But fate is fickle. Fate is unkind.

Fate takes John from him three days later and he is left alone to bear the weight of centuries.

He will, in all his lives, always remember Shiloh.

Will remember the dozens of nameless, faceless men he helped save, and the one he could not.

Will always remember losing John after only three days, and spending forty more years walking alone in his shadow.

~~~

_“I always use you.”_

_John shakes his head. “Not always,” he reminds Sherlock. He searches for the name, the place. “Shiloh.”_

_Sherlock’s eyes widen. He stares at John, face pale. When he repeats the word, his voice is a whisper, and his eyes are far away._

~~~

“It’s different this time,” John says. He stretches his hand across the table. The candle slides to the side, and he touches Sherlock’s fingers. They’re warm against his, and he presses his fingers against the pulse point of Sherlock’s wrist. He cannot help but touch – it has been so long, so very long, since Sherlock sank beneath the ice cold waters of the North Sea. He revels in the blood-warmed skin, chases away the cloudy specter of death.

John’s fingers slide around his wrist. Sherlock looks up at him, meets his eyes.

John quickly withdraws his hand, embarrassed. Sherlock looks away, clears his throat.

A hundred things are different this time. A thousand.

But only one of them cannot be named.

_Different._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock explores new corridors of his Mind Palace.

CHAPTER 3

Sherlock slides into life with John with surprising ease. He didn’t know – not until he looked up that day at Bart’s and met John Watson’s eyes, not until John moved into 221B, not until John killed a man and saved his life that very first day – that he’d been living life for more than thirty years as only half a man.

Sometimes, in this London flat in the twenty-first century, he closes his eyes and allows the specters of his other lives to rise up around him and speak. Flat on his back on the sofa, arms crossed on his chest, he loses himself in the hidden places of his mind palace, wanders down corridors only recently revealed, examining the carefully stored knowledge of a dozen lifetimes.

For his part, John _remembers_. They converse, sitting here in this room over boxes of take-away, a casual word about Prague, or Morocco. A nostalgic smile over an old acquaintance, a quiet sigh from John at the mention of a long-dead wife. But John’s remembering isn’t limited to memories alone. John’s _body_ remembers. The steps and passes of the Virginia Reel. Cleaning and loading a rifle. Shaving his face with a straight-edge razor. Riding a horse, cinching a saddle, cleaning a pipe, tying a cravat.

Drawing a bow, sighting his target, keeping his aim steady and sure.

Releasing the arrow.

Muscle memory imbued in his bones. Sherlock watches him reach for a pipe he does not smoke, push away spectacles he does not wear.

And while John goes through the motions outwardly, stumbling once and again until he reconciles who he is with who he was, Sherlock closes his eyes and disappears into himself. 

It’s all here, in the mind palace he builds anew with every life, only to discover that the edifice of this lifetime – grand as it is – is simply an addition to the one previous. The connections between them remain closed until he brushes elbows with his past. Only then does he discover uncharted rooms, hidden suites, a door at the top of a dead-end stairway.

In his mind, he wraps his fingers around the doorknob, feels the cold metal thrum with the pent-up life behind it. The room has been dormant for too long. There is cold wind here, and the spray of salt on his skin. There is the smell of fish and the rock of the boat beneath his sea legs as he opens the door to Oslo.

As his life in Oslo coalesces within him, he’s not greeted by the vast expanse of ocean, nor whipped by salt-crusted wind. The mind palace is not a remembered place, a recreated venue. It’s a quiet hall, with vaulted ceilings and shadowed corners. The voices that speak here are quiet murmurs, whispered susurrations. When Sherlock, eyes still shut in his supine position on the sofa, opens his mind’s eye here, bends back his head to stare figuratively upward, the ceiling lights up with constellations, bright in the dark of winter. 

He is filled with it. Awed by it. 

He can name the stars, trace their shapes as they join with others. The Great Wagon – Wain – a constellation of the Vikings. His life in Norway was not that long ago, but he knows the stars as they did, has studied them for a lifetime. He raises his hand, marks out Frigga’s Distaff – the three bright stars making up Orion’s belt.

It comes to him, in this moment of revelation, as he gazes at the guideposts of the life he lived before he was reborn in London, that John had every reason to be amazed that this Sherlock has deleted the Solar System.

Ironic. _Prophetic._

He takes all the time he needs, all the time he wants, to absorb the nuances of the man he once was. He studies memories and knowledge from a dozen different angles, focusing – as he now knows he does each time he begins this journey anew – on how each archived item connects him to the man he now knows as John Watson.

A fisherman and sailor who gave this stow-away rich boy a reason to live, who listened to his lessons on the stars, who taught him to sail. Who trusted him with his life.

Sherlock remembers the frigid waters filling his lungs. Remembers the opaque blue, the gasping fear, the weight of failure, the pall of death.

What keeps them here, meeting time and again? Blessed with more time, cursed with time eternal. What does fate demand? An offering? A promise? 

Is time a riddle to solve? Are all beings cast adrift as are he and John? 

Hours pass – John is at work and does not know that Sherlock is lost here on the sofa, immobile, afloat on a sea of tactile memory-dreams. When Sherlock finally opens his eyes, the look on his face, in his eyes, is that of the consulting detective who’s just found the clue to break a vexing case.

Sudden revelation. The _aha_ moment.

He turns onto his side and stares across at John’s chair. He almost has it now – the beginning, the middle, the end. The reason behind the memories. The message in the stars.

He remains there, breathing evenly, for only a moment or two, then sits up and reaches for his index cards. 

He finds it odd that he’s never done this before, never attempted to chart the course of their lives. But he’s a detective now, and he’s tired of lives half-lived, one of them always cut short. Lonely years for one of them, tragic ends, always the memory of failure, what one could have done to save the other.

Do they not have the power in their hands to stop this madness? To reach – what? A Christian heaven? Nirvana? True enlightenment? A peaceful end, two lives well-lived? A cottage in Sussex, walks along the sea, a final sunset and two souls set free to roam the stars. When will the weight of the past become too heavy to bear? In another lifetime? A dozen?

He studies the cards, he traces the patterns. He has the answer. He knows how to break the cycle. He only needs John to see, to understand. To agree to his plan.

Later, over dinner at Angelo’s, he explains his conclusions. John stares at him as he calmly, carefully, delivers the news.

“No.” John picks up his fork and knife and goes back to eating. He does not look at Sherlock again.

“John – you must.”

John pauses, knife and fork in hand, and stares at Sherlock. He’s assessing him – discerning if he’s serious, answering as if he is while not quite convinced. “Why does it have to be me? You do it.”

He returns to his meal and Sherlock stares at him, incredulous. Hours earlier, Sherlock emerged from his mind palace, charted the history of their many lives on a series of index cards, tacked them to the wall, arranged and rearranged them and come to the inevitable conclusion that John must have a child. 

For there is no continuity, no hook into the future. In all their pasts, no matter the length of their lives, neither procreated – neither left a child on the earth. In all their reincarnations, there has never been the possibility of crossing paths with a descendent, never the temptation to crisscross the world to see how their progeny faired.

“This is clearly your task, John.”

Sherlock tries to remain calm, to speak directly. He hasn’t touched the food on the plate before him. He ignores it now, staring instead at John, willing him to understand.

John does not understand. He swallows a bite of pasta and carefully places his utensils on his plate. He studies Sherlock, elbow propped on the table, chin resting atop his fist. Sherlock waits it out.

“Look, you’re brilliant. I know that. And I think I understand where you’re going with this. You think if we – if one of us – reproduces, if we leave a child behind when we die….” He looks around, and lowers his voice. He leans forward, and Sherlock notes how the candlelight deepens the colour of his eyes. “When we die – we leave a piece of ourselves behind, right? And that might be enough to….” His voice trails off.

“To satisfy the fates,” Sherlock murmurs.

“Right.” John picks up his fork, studies it, places it back on the plate. He shakes his head, then raises his eyes and meets Sherlock’s.

“Look – I’m not…well, I’m not meant to be a father. I’d be horrible at it. And I can’t – I can’t do it just to….” He sighs, then looks at Sherlock imploringly. “You do it.”

Sherlock licks his thumb and forefinger, then quickly snuffs out the candle on their table.

“Not my area, John,” he says quietly, sadly, just loudly enough for John to hear.

Then he stands, and hurries from the restaurant, alone, his plate untouched.

And John stares after him, and finally, _finally_ , begins to understand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has never - not in any of his lives - been _normal_.

There has never been a world, a lifetime, in which Sherlock has been _normal_.

Just once - _once_ \- he’d like to desire a woman. Warm to the softness of her skin, the sweetness of her breath. It’s a foreign idea, appealing only in its normalcy, but it’s not to be, not in this lifetime or any other. 

Just once, he’d like to live _John’s_ life.

He leans against a wall a busy block away from Angelo’s and lights a cigarette, fills his lungs with burning, soothing smoke and releases it in a slow, sad exhale. He has left John behind – acting the coward, though what he’s just done is the bravest act of his many lives.

He’s given John an out. A different path. A way to stay within his bounds of comfort, his normal, normal _fucking normal_ life.

It’s _different_ now, here in the twenty-first century. It’s _accepted_. It’s talked about. It’s not a crime, nor an aberration. 

The time is right. The social norms are right. Yet here he is – here they are – and John still cannot see through Sherlock’s façade.

Some men like women. Some men…don’t.

And that’s it – isn’t it? 

Sherlock is not a virgin.

Always, there has been someone before John. Never is there anyone after they meet. His encounters are brief, secret, shameful, unsatisfying. He is young, and curious. He thinks he craves the physical release, but it is never enough. The physical intimacy is simply a reminder of what he cannot have.

He’s looked at it from every angle, from every lifetime. He sees the pattern, has charted the trajectory on index cards, has blocked it out on the stage of his mind palace theater. He cannot ignore that this life is pivotal. Already, they are sharing a flat. John is not married. He’s a medical doctor, for God’s sake. Educated. Accomplished. He’s fought in a war, been invalided out. He’s had his hand inside a breathing human being, stitched back together the ragged wounds of war. 

From first to last, their positions in life grow closer together. John rises, Sherlock falls.

He envisions their series of reincarnations as a long flight of stairs, grand and sweeping. John at the bottom, Sherlock atop. And in every life, John ascends a step, while Sherlock descends. They are closer in social status, economic status, education, than they’ve ever been. Sherlock cares less and less about his roots, society, money, even education. He is more in touch with his body – with the racing of his heart, the rush of adrenaline, the flush of his cheeks. 

He has never spoken of his hunger, never to John, never to anyone, not even to the men who’ve touched him, whom he’s touched in return. It’s a hunger for more than flesh, and more than friendship. An insatiable hunger he’s learned to control, to sate with exhaustion, to mask by not feeding his body enough.

He takes a drag of the cigarette, releases another lungful of smoke, casually blows it to the side. 

He considers the look on John’s face in the restaurant only minutes ago. Not understanding what Sherlock was trying to tell him.

_Not my department._

Sherlock cannot father a child. Not in the usual way. His body has _always_ been transport, in all the lives – long and short – they’ve lived together. John has had wives and lovers – though they fade in importance, in presence, as his friendship with Sherlock deepens. But Sherlock has no desire to take a woman to bed, cannot fathom convincing his body to shape itself around hers, to respond to her caresses, to bury itself inside her. 

John must do it – if it is to be done. For it’s one solution, one good solution.

It’s not the only one, however.

Yet Sherlock believes in this proposition. Stop the trajectory of edging ever closer together until John rises above and Sherlock sinks below. Shift the focus from each other to a child. Tether John to his progeny – refocus him in a new trajectory altogether.

It’s a missing piece in two lives that have seen it all, done it all, but who have never done what is most human of all – to carry on the bloodline, the name. To invest in the future. 

He crushes the cigarette against the brick wall and pockets the butt, then pushes off the wall to go on his way, back to 221B, to face John – if he’s there – to continue the lie.

He’s counted the steps on that imaginary staircase and knows there are an even number. There’s not a stair where they can stand together. They’ll pass each other up, one headed upward, one down, always a step apart in this insanity.

So close. So close in this lifetime. 

And isn’t there hope yet?

It’s early, still. They’ve known each other such a short time (six hundred years, two weeks, three days). Yet John is clearly straight, bending his attention to Sherlock – fine-tuned, alert to his needs, appreciative, supportive – yet leaving him (as he always has) to sate himself in the arms of another.

A line he cannot cross.

A line he cannot fathom crossing.

Can’t he _see_? Through all these years, these lifetimes? 

One thing Sherlock knows - irrefutably – is that if John’s mindset is to change, if he is to see the proverbial light, he must do it on his own. Sherlock cannot hand him his feelings, cannot deliver the solution to their plight in a gift-wrapped package and wait while John carefully removes the tape and ribbon, holds the gift inside, feels it, understands. It must be John’s choice, John’s move, John’s revelation. 

For if it’s not, and he rejects the thing wholly, outright, they will live with that weight, that rejection, for all their lives to come. 

It was easier in Oslo, in Melbourne, in Prague. Easier when the sin was greater, the repercussions more severe. The threat of revelation a more dangerous game.

Already, Mycroft has _assumed_. 

_Sentiment._

He’s planted the seed in John’s mind. He’s done his duty.

The rest – well, the rest is up to John.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John contemplates Sherlock's proposal - and remembers his final days in Oslo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a past - life suicide in this chapter.

Chapter 5

John has spent centuries watching Sherlock’s hands. In every incarnation, those hands have been long-fingered, dexterous, agile. They curve over the keyboard of a piano, grip a paintbrush or quill, sort through shards of broken pottery, reconstructing an ancient vase with uncommon ease.

But still, yet, he is mesmerized by their movement as he stands in the doorway of 221B. He’s taken his time coming back here – finished his meal at Angelo’s, had Sherlock’s boxed up to take with him. Talked to Harry on his mobile, stopped on the corner to pick up milk and bread and tea. He’s meandered through streets, cut through the park, stopped to rest on a bench to think about Sherlock’s last words.

_Not my area._

He’d let his thoughts drift as he walked. Sometimes, when he clears his mind and pictures Sherlock, he is transported to places and times too distant to consciously recall. But today, his thoughts bring up images not so very far removed. The sturdy fishing boat on the North Sea, bucking wildly beneath him. The waves crashing over the rails. His voice raw from screaming, his teeth chattering, his arms pinned to his sides by one of the men who had just thrown a terrified, struggling Sherlock overboard, into the storm, into the unforgiving sea.

The _sound_ of it all – the groaning of the boat, the crash of the waves, the feral howl of the wind.

The memories torment him. He cannot erase the image of the young man who charted the constellations for him, cannot begin to reconcile the feelings he denied, the feelings he tried to erase with a single bullet to the brain.

The violin evokes it now, playing the stormy sea. Does Sherlock know? After that ridiculous idea voiced at Angelo’s, can he even suspect?

A child. 

In another life, perhaps. 

But not now. Not now that he is remembering Oslo. 

They are only weeks into their existence together here in London. Months will go by, years, and always new memories will surface, triggered by experiences, and emotion, and pain. 

Today, Sherlock’s final words before leaving him in the restaurant, Sherlock’s graceful hands on the bow and violin, can only evoke Oslo.

The final days. The sudden storm. 

Loud. Everything was so fucking _loud_. Everything save Sherlock’s voice, forever silenced by the sea.

His hand…his fingers…the last thing John saw of him, disappearing into the sea, grasping at the insubstantial water.

He was young, beautiful, as bright as the brightest star in the sky. Different. Complex. A boy of twenty-two to John’s sea-worn thirty-five. Alive with possibility – brave, adventurous. He saw through John, past his weathered face, past his calloused hands, into his poet’s soul.

John felt exposed, out of his depth.

Excited. Alive. Terrified.

It kills him even now to think of those days, days that whispered of an impossible life, and he tries to banish the thoughts of the past as he stands here, in the present, and focuses on Sherlock’s hands.

_He was a stow-away_ , they say, long-dead voices echoing in John’s head, as they wrestle him back. _Queer. No one will know. No one will ever know._

John cured his rage three weeks later with three bullets.

One for each of the men who’d thrown Sherlock to his death.

The third to forever quiet the shame and guilt he carried inside. And perhaps – perhaps – to carry him forward to another meeting.

How odd it is, how improbable, to recall one’s death as a past event.

His fingers curl now around the door frame as he stares at Sherlock’s back. 

_Coward_ , he thinks, of himself, to himself. _Cheater._ You cheated time, and death, and life, and hurried this plot along. You skipped chapters – you’ve _missed_ something.

He’s died many times, sometimes in pain, sometimes alone, sometimes in the arms of a wife or lover. Those memories fade into each other, layered one upon the other like blankets of stars in the summer sky. Yet the memory of his last final moments is clear and crisp. The gun heavy and cold in his hand, its shape and weight familiar, welcoming. He is not afraid of the pain, not afraid of death. Death is a necessary passage. He will live again, find Sherlock again, start over. He recalls now, as he watches Sherlock’s hands, that he promised himself, before he squeezed that trigger, to embrace the intoxicating danger.

Next time.

This time.

He remembers, and the heartache is drawn out with every note of the violin. He remembers lifting the weapon, pressing it against his temple. Recalls looking out to sea, feeling the tug of the waves at his feet just before he squeezed the trigger.

He felt it in that last life, on the sea, in Oslo. But he is only now beginning to understand. 

The pull. The rush. The tunnel vision. Not _how_ everything _not_ Sherlock fades and blurs once they find each other, but _why_.

All those lives.

Wasted?

No. Not wasted.

What is that expression?

Live and Learn.

He was so close a lifetime ago. And Sherlock – brilliant, queer, young Sherlock with his eyes on the stars – Sherlock died before John could put it all together. 

Sherlock’s death made him blow it all apart. 

And now Sherlock - _this_ Sherlock – tells him to have a child. To leave him, to find another.

He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Of Sherlock telling him to become a father, of him telling Sherlock to take on the task himself.

The violin stills on a last, stormy note, and Sherlock turns to find John watching him. He lets the violin fall to his side, bow still in hand.

“A child, Sherlock?”

Sherlock shrugs. He doesn’t seem surprised to find John watching him, nor to be continuing the conversation he abandoned two hours ago. He gives John an enigmatic smile. “You have a better idea?”

They face each other across a dozen lifetimes. 

John nods.

“I do.”


	6. Chapter 6

Things are not unfolding as Sherlock imagined they would.

John has finished his meal at Angelo’s, has taken his time returning to Baker Street. He’s been walking, wandering, thinking. He’s come to a conclusion, but it’s not the conclusion Sherlock expected.

John is standing by the door, gazing solemnly at Sherlock. He has been there for some time – quietly watching Sherlock play.

“You know – I’d never have time for a child.” John says as he moves into the kitchen and places the groceries on the counter. “You’re pretty much a full-time commitment already and I’ve only been here a few weeks. I’m not – ” He falters, then swallows, steels himself as he edges a toe over a line they never cross. “I’m not going to lose you again – not like last time.”

By unvoiced agreement, they do not speak of endings, nor of the time spent without the other once one of them has departed.

“John – don’t.” Sherlock’s voice holds a warning, but John – stubborn, decided – pushes forward, ignoring it.

“We never talk about it. Maybe that’s our problem.” 

“No.” Sherlock tries to move around John and return to the sitting room, but John steps in front of him.

“Sherlock – we need to talk about Oslo.”

_Oslo._

Sherlock is still holding his violin. He turns from John now, faces the window, lifts the instrument to his shoulder. Raises the bow, pauses a second too long.

“They said – they said you were queer.” John’s voice is unexpectedly rough.

Sherlock turns slowly. He doesn’t have to ask who they are. He knows. He holds John’s gaze, unflinching.

And here it is – just like that. The moment of truth. 

_Not with a bang but a whimper._

But he knows John. Knows him like the back of his own hand, the scar on his wrist, the face in the mirror.

He affects a matter-of-fact attitude.

“They were right,” he says. “John….”

John shakes his head. He is powering through this, settling this matter once and for all.

“You’ve always been. Every time. Haven’t you?”

Sherlock examines his hands. He earned the scar, at the juncture of palm and wrist, when he was nine, examining his grandfather’s antique cigar cutter. It is a reminder, in this lifetime, of a quiet gentleman who smelled of tobacco, who was never too busy to answer the young boy’s questions.

_Grandfather – if you had to choose – would you rather be blind or deaf?_

_Grandfather, you do love me more than you love Mycroft, don’t you?_

_Grandfather – is everything just a coincidence or does it happen on purpose?_

Sherlock flexes his fingers, stiff from playing, and looks out the window as the shadowy figure of a man long gone slips away. 

_You’ve always been. Every time._

“That doesn’t matter.”

_It’s the only thing that matters._

“You’re never married.”

Sherlock shrugs and draws the bow across the strings – sharply, too sharply. 

“But you haven’t had lovers, either. Men – women – no one. I’d have known.”

A long silence, three breaths, four. Sherlock remembers the aching release, a firm palm pressing against him in a room crowded with strangers.

“I’ve had lovers, John.” Sherlock quietly states, at last. His voice is not defensive. He is not staking a claim, but rather confessing a transgression.

“No.” 

John seems winded, and Sherlock watches as he regains his breath, recovering from a punch in the gut that should not have floored him as it has. 

“What? Did you really think me a virgin in every life, John? Did you assume I was immune to the pleasures of the flesh?”

He tries for flippant, casual. It comes out defensive.

“I’d have known,” John repeats stubbornly.

Sherlock digs in.

“Yes. You’d likely have known. Once we met and fell in step with each other, at least.”

The shoe drops. John is staring at him still, and there is something there – something in his eyes – that Sherlock hasn’t seen before. Not like this. It’s painful, and bittersweet, and reminds him – too much – of those last days, in the North Sea, in his all-too-brief life in Oslo.

He averts his eyes, recalling John’s weathered presence, the kindnesses he ‘d shown him, the lilt in his voice, the smell of his pipe as the smoke wafted between them on cold, windy nights when the stars pierced the dome of sky above them.

 _And that one – right beside the moon? Which star is that?_ He can hear John’s voice, see the way he points at the sky with the bowl of his pipe cupped in his hand.

There is a hand on his wrist – John’s hand. This John’s. It grips tightly, almost painfully.

This is unlike John – the intensity, the fire.

“But not after? Not after we connected?”

John has the strength of a solider, the steadiness of a surgeon. There is no tremor in his hand now. 

“Sherlock?” John tugs on Sherlock’s wrist. He is so close to the truth – it is there – right there in the air between them. Sherlock’s heart, on a platter, on his sleeve, clawing out of his chest to choke him. Bared at last.

Dare he hope?

He shakes his head. Tries to speak, but the words catch in his throat. 

This is foreign. Unknown. An unchartered place in the bolt hole of his heart. 

“Never?” The fingers are vice-like on his wrist. The thumb presses against his pulse point and his racing heart betrays him.

“Sherlock – all these years?”

“Don’t pity me, John.”

He jerks his arm away and retreats to the window. He stares down onto the street, back to John, hoping he’ll leave – hoping he’ll stay. He reminds himself that he _wanted_ this. Wanted John to deduce it on his own, to see through the façade.

Wanted to end a dozen lifetimes of unrequited love. One way – or the other.

Behind him, he hears John sink into his chair. A soft creak, a whoosh of air, a gentle scrape, then John blows out a breath, then another, and another. 

John’s breathing is ragged. He is struggling for air, and for a moment, a cruel moment, Sherlock thinks he is laughing. He turns to face his Judas _(his Mary Magdeline)_ , words on his lips that will whip across John’s face like a lover’s slap.

The words die as John lifts his tear-soaked face and meets Sherlock’s eyes.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock – all these years.”

Sherlock feels the corner of his mouth rise in an automatic response, well-honed and polished.

“I’ve been happy. You – what we’ve had – is enough.”

Now, the indelicate sound John makes is more laugh than sob.

“You idiot. You total wanker. It’s not enough. Not even close.” 

John stands and moves across the floor toward him in a movement so fluid he seems to be floating. The fingers of his right hand grasp Sherlock’s shirt while the left hand circles his neck. 

“I couldn’t live without you in Oslo. I couldn’t live with myself. I was a coward – a fool,” John whispers as his lips graze Sherlock’s jaw.

He kisses Sherlock’s mouth, and his breath is the wind off the sea. The ocean roars in Sherlock’s ears, and gravity fails, and stars defeat the darkness.

And all that they never said – not in Melbourne, nor Florence, nor Oslo – is in that kiss.

Sherlock is drowning in it, but it’s not like dying at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where it began...when it began...how it began.

CHAPTER 7

Where did it begin? When did it begin?

_Why_ did it begin?

The beginning is clear – both John and Sherlock recall the first time they met, though they remember the events somewhat differently. Clouds haze perfect recall these six hundred years, and even the pages of history toward the end of the nearly interminable Hundred Year’s War do not agree.

Rouen. 1431. A young woman, some would say a soldier, others a spy, or a martyr, is burned at the stake in this English-held French city on the banks of the Seine.

They burn her until she dies, her eyes fixed on the crucifixes held before her, then they burn her again, and again, turn her body to bits of bone and ash, then sweep up those bits and scatter them in the Seine.

John’s beginning is here, mercenary soldier, fighting on foreign soil in exchange for a bit of land to farm when he returns. He does as he is told, in full view of his superiors, and if the ashes he gathers feel heavier in his hands than the ashes he rakes in the cooking fires at camp, if they seem to sear his skin no matter that they are cool and dry, he puts it from his mind, and bends to his task, and breathes in the dust of human flesh not for the first time in this long war.

He stoically refuses to think of the young girl’s pleading eyes. He did what he could for her. A small thing. A token of the faith she held dear. And in the end, the priests she’d requested had held up their own ornate crucifixes, golden and jeweled, and she’d stared ahead at them while the flames licked around her, words of prayer drawn from her lips as the fire consumed her.

For his small transgression, for the bit of comfort he’d offered, he’s been given the task of scraping the earth with his fingers to gather her ashes and feed them to the river. 

And when the river has washed away every bit of the girl soldier, this Jeanne d’Arc, this English soldier sits on the bank near the water, and stares at his hands for a long while, then takes out his knife and begins to scrape the ashes from beneath his fingernails.

And time and again, he will look up to watch the river flow by, stained with the detritus of war, and fleetingly, hopelessly, wish he could wash away the pervasive smell of ash and death, and the feel of the grit beneath his fingers, and the crumble and snap of bone and skin as the fair body burned.

He has an audience as he sits and works, but he doesn’t yet know it.

The Duke’s youngest son, Lord William, recently arrived to learn the art of war from his father, watches the soldier scrape away the ashes which, only this morning, had been a young woman with defiant eyes. He has witnessed the execution impassively, has seen the prisoner reduced to ash and smoke, has observed her captors, her tormentors, has heard her last request. William is a scholar. He’s been given a charge – to observe, then to set ink to parchment and make a record of the execution.

And in his impassive observation, of prayers and taunts and flame and screams and robed priests and mounted gentry, it was this man, this simple soldier cleaning his fingernails, who caught the weight of the Duke’s son’s considerable scrutiny.

“You gave her something – before they secured her hands. She tucked it into her bosom. What was it?”

He is brusque, direct. He collects information, processes it. He is not given to idle conversation.

The soldier pauses and drives the knife into the earth beside him, then stands. He has not had words with the Duke’s son, but has watched as he’s acclimated to this strange new life in Rouen, and has been intrigued by the quiet man who takes in everything with those sharp, intelligent eyes. 

“I did.” John meets the other man’s gaze, and answers honestly, carefully, aware of his station. “A token of comfort – to keep on her person at the end.”

“A token.” The man gives an odd smile, and looks hard at John, inviting him to continue.

“A crucifix, sir. A crude one I made myself.”

“Ah.” The man appears to process this, and nods in approval. Not of the action, John thinks, but because his answer fits into a logical scheme in the young man’s mind.

“And for that offense you were made to gather her ashes.”

“It was a job like any other. A job is a job.”

The man clasps his hands behind his back and regards John seriously. “Tell me – have your hands been clean since you arrived in France? Do you take the time to clean under your nails every night?”

John looks quickly down at his hands, then back at his inquisitor. His fingers are sore and bleeding. He shakes his head.

“You intrigue me, soldier. You will serve me from now forward. I will inform my father.”

John wonders how old this young man is – twenty? Twenty-two? He speaks with authority, but there is a challenge in his voice, and John thinks – perhaps – that this man has something to prove, and John will now be part and parcel to this plan.

John nods slowly, unsure of this new development. At the other’s request, he follows him a distance to his comfortable quarters and stands while a servant fetches a bowl of fragrant, heated water and places it, at the young Lord’s instruction, in the middle of the floor.

And then, to John’s surprise, he is instructed to sit on the floor, and to immerse his hands in the water. Then Lord William takes up a brush and, holding one of John’s hands in his own, begins to wash away the evidence of his labor.

“This is not your sin,” he says as he works. “You did as you were bid to do, and you need not carry the residue of that young woman’s death on your hands. Now tell me– you fashioned a crucifix for the one they called Jeanne d’Arc. Why?”

John thinks that an odd question, and doesn’t have an honest answer. He watches as each finger is returned to a state of cleanliness it hasn’t seen since long ago when he swam in the river with the other boys on carefree summer days of yore.

Lord William’s fingers are long, the skin calloused – rougher than the hands of the son of the Duke should be. Coarse – as if this young man has spent long hours on horseback, the reins wearing calloused ridges in his palms. His touch is oddly comforting, and John cannot remember how long it’s been since he’s been touched like this. He has neither wife nor mother, and the women he beds want their gold and do not waste time on gentle caresses.

When his hands are clean, Lord William calls for the servants to remove the water, and to bring food and wine. He sits John at the table, fills a goblet, and pushes it across the table toward him. 

John lifts the cup to his lips and swallows a taste of heaven.

He feels odd, drinking wine meant for royalty, and he does not understand the sequence of events that led him here, that drew the eye of the Duke’s son to his meager person. But he answers his questions, and shows him how to fashion a crucifix from the grasses that grow in shallows along the river, and tries to explain what he saw in the young prisoner’s eyes.

How he had seen defiance there, and a well of sorrow, and a faith deeper than the sea.

He is strangely fascinated with Lord William, and his odd ways, and bold questions. With the inside out, upside down sort of way that he sees the world and notices all the base and unimportant things, the people that don’t sparkle and shine. Things like the crude crucifix he fashioned for the condemned woman. People like John himself.

He’ll remain with his new master for fifteen years. And when he dies, pierced by an assassin’s arrow meant for his master, Lord William will wash John’s bloody hands that gripped the shaft of the arrow, and weep with grief.

ooOOOoo

_Where did it begin? When did it begin?_

_Why did it begin?_

Beginnings no longer matter. What matters is the here, and the now. 

As John’s lips move across his, as they press against his mouth, as his fingers trace Sherlock’s nape, his jaw, tug at the curls trailing down over his neck, Sherlock consumes these novel sensations.

He has kissed this face before, as he closed lifeless eyes. Kissed these fingers, as he laced them together to rest forever on an unmoving chest. He has rested his head over an unbeating heart, and borne the weight of a cold, still body.

But never before has he felt the pulse of a beating heart beneath his lips, and when he takes John’s hand in his, lifts it to his lips, kisses his fingertips, it is with awe, and reverence, and blessed, blessed relief.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> La petite mort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating on this chapter is a hard M, possibly a light NC-17. I've changed the rating of the fic to "E" just to be safe.

Chapter 8

 

They carry the wounds of the past in the present.

A circle on John’s stomach where the hair does not grow. An aching rattle in Sherlock’s chest on cold, wet days. Under John’s scarred shoulder lie other scars, the wound from Shiloh, the pain of lifting Sherlock’s lifeless body from the rocks beneath a castle turret.

As John Watson sinks to his knees in the vee of Sherlock Holmes’ legs, here in their shared flat on Baker Street in London, he is this John, and every John, every man whose life has been lived, ultimately, for Sherlock. As Sherlock Holmes sinks his fingers into John Watson’s hair, and caresses his scalp, tightening his hold as John runs his hands over Sherlock’s thighs, he is this Sherlock, and every William, every Sherlock, every form of every man who has loved John – wholly, purely, chastely. Who has waited. Who has wanted.

And as he presses back into the cushions of this sofa, as he lifts his hips as John fumbles clumsily with his trouser button, as he relaxes into the (finally, _finally_ ) inevitable, he suddenly understands.

It is wrong. This is all wrong.

John stumbles backward as Sherlock stands. John blinks away his surprise, and takes a step backward.

“No.”

It is the only word that Sherlock can voice, the only thought he can form. He hates the stricken look on John’s face, hates it so much that he moves forward, and takes John’s hands in his, and holds them tightly as he leans in, kisses John’s eyes, the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry – I thought you wanted this.”

“I want you,” breathes Sherlock as he kisses John’s lips through the growing smile on his own face. “But you’ve spent far too much time already kneeling at my feet, John.”

And as he presses John down onto the sofa, and kneels between John’s legs, John understands, and he melts into this new position, the unexpected subject of Sherlock’s worship, his muse, his instrument, his opus.

Sherlock’s fingers are not clumsy as he opens John’s trousers, guides John to lift his hips, frees him of shoes and trousers and pants. There is an art to fellatio, but the muscle memory of the act is only a blueprint, for never before, never before today, has his heart been part of the game.

He feels it now, welling up in his chest, in his throat, as John’s legs instinctively squeeze around him, as John’s fingers dig into his own thighs, then move, to his neck, to his scalp, as they ghost against the tops of his ears. He is waiting, waiting, and Sherlock is waiting. For what – a signal? A sign? A moan from John, a skip of his heart.

For the drop of fluid at the tip of John’s penis to pool over, to slide down the head, to be caught by Sherlock’s tongue, and swallowed.

He is hungrier for having tasted, more greedy for having sampled.

His mouth slips down over John and he has never wanted anything as much as he wants the taste of John, John filling him, John pressing insistently into his mouth, John’s fingers clenching in his curls. 

Sherlock has imagined this moment, fantasized about it. No man has ever measured up to John, not in this life, not in any life. But nothing he’s experienced in the past, nothing he’s conjured in his incredible, brilliant mind, nothing is anything like _this_.

He wraps one hand around John’s back, pulls him against him until John bends his head and rests it atop Sherlock’s, breathing into his hair, warm, moist gusts with quiet susurrations. Invoking the deities, uttering profanities, whispering his love. He works the other hand around John’s shaft, circles the base and squeezes, staving off orgasm. He is not ready for John to spend himself yet, not ready to give up this worshipful pose, the synergy of their bodies joined.

He wants all of John. He wants John beneath his fingers, in the marrow of his bone, in the unexplored depths of his blasphemous soul. He works John’s cock with his tongue as he pulls in even more of his length, not relenting as John groans, the sound of it kissing the shell of his ear and traveling down to his groin, caressing his heart as it moves through his veins. Heart, soul and mind flow between lives and he is wrapped in a tangle of John, is making love to the servant, the soldier, the fisherman, the farmer. 

John presses up into him again, breathing Sherlock’s name on a broken sigh, as he begs for release, throws back his head, and, with all the instinct of a man condemned to wait a hundred lifetimes for a single kiss, cants his pelvis upward. Sherlock slips his fingers down, behind the warm bollocks drawn up tight and hard, against the smooth flesh behind, aching for release himself, aching to sink his fingers into the heat, aching to press himself into John, to lick the sweat from his back as John’s body clenches around him. In his mind, he is standing behind John at the bathroom sink, John grasping the tiled edge, head up, watching John watch him watch them. Drawing his hand up John’s abdomen, over his stomach, circling a nipple, then grazing it lightly as John hisses, squeezing it with unrelenting pressure as John’s eyes close, as he moans, as he thrusts back to take in more of Sherlock, then thrusts forward into his hand that has crept down now to grasp his aching cock.

Is it the end of forever when John pulses in his mouth. It is the taste of forgiveness, the breath of delivery. They fall onto one another and Sherlock ruts against John’s hip, his thigh, until he spends himself, rolling with John onto the floor as he shudders to stillness again.

They are wrapped in each other in the muted lamplight, and John lies very still, Sherlock’s head on his chest, stroking his lover’s back as warm tears pool on his skin, a river of joy to drain a well of unfathomable sadness.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Sherlock's fall from the rooftop, John remembers the promise he made, but he will always be a warrior, and he will never forget who owns his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter uses canon events but alters timelines and gives the events a twist. Sherlock falls, John meets and marries Mary. Sherlock returns. Warning for character death in this scene.

When Sherlock falls to his death from the roof of St. Bart’s Hospital, John remains behind, as broken as the body on the pavement, as absent as the beating of his lover’s heart.

His own heart is a dying ember, a smouldering corpse. Deprived of its empowering fuel, its beats echo hollow in his parched chest. 

It hurts to breathe. 

He cannot go on.

He _must_ go on.

He promised Sherlock, promised him that first morning when they awoke tangled together on Sherlock’s bed. After Sherlock nuzzled him awake with the press of lips on his throat, with the surprisingly erotic scrape of stubble on the hollow of his cheek.

The lovemaking had come first, gentle and slow as they kindled the flame, then urgent, demanding, claiming as John screamed out his pleasure without uttering a sound, as Sherlock let go the restraint of centuries that should have driven him mad. Unloosed it on John, punishing pleasure, exuberant joy. Fulfillment both achingly sweet and brutally human, scouring their souls, lifting them up to ethereal heights, slamming them down to taste the salt of the earth.

It was a euphoric feeling far and away from anything his feeble imagination could have conjured - Sherlock’s fingers digging into his flesh, his cock buried inside him – deep and tight and full and hot and oh so fucking fucking _right_. The words that fell from those beloved lips – a litany, a prayer, a sonnet, an ode. Breathy and rhythmic, dripping onto his flesh like drops of honey.

_I’ve wanted you – wanted this - love you – always, John … always … always … always._

Promises were as easy to make as secrets were to reveal in those blissful moments, and when Sherlock spooned against him, held him tightly, wrapped around him like a comforting quilt, John closed his eyes as Sherlock’s heart beat through him and spoke, at last, of Oslo.

The crushing guilt, the self-loathing and blame. Knowing he could have done more - _should_ have done more. How he had planned it methodically, murder and suicide. Three bullets. Three lives forfeit for the one taken. 

Standing on the rocky shore, ankle-deep in the cold waters. A blink of the eye, a seabird calling, a bullet in his brain, unfelt, unfettered, mermaids tugging at his ankles, taking him down to a watery grave. Laying him to rest beside the cold blue body of the man-child who loved the stars and lauded the galaxies with soft-spoken words on moonless nights.

Sherlock’s arms enveloping him. Lips on his temple, soft pleas in his ear.

“Never again, John. If I’m taken away – promise me. Promise me now.”

He’d promised. In the endorphin-fueled luxury of that first morning, and again only weeks ago.

Sherlock had known. He must have known. For he’d reminded John of the long-ago promise, intense and earnest as he sat across from him at Angelo’s. Live on. Live on for _me_. Find someone else, love someone else, to make the waiting easier. 

_I’ll find you again._

The waiting is not easy. Time ticks away in slow motion. John’s head is wooly, his vision blurred around broken edges. He touches but does not feel, does not discern shape or texture. Voices echo in his head, the rush of wind fills his ears. Mycroft tries to engage him in the work, Greg tempts him with cases, Molly stops by, but the flat with its echoing memories of Sherlock sends her flying away. Mrs. Hudson makes tea, and sits down across from him, in Sherlock’s chair, and holds his cold hand, and stitches together the pieces of his broken heart. But it falls to pieces again when he smells Sherlock’s pillow, buries his face in the folds of the beloved Belstaff.

Time is wicked, and evil, and slow, agonizingly slow. There is little joy in a life half-lived, and it is infinitely worse to lose Sherlock in this world than in any other before. He has memories, yes, but they plague him as he sleeps, as Sherlock waltzes through his dreams, vivid technicolour dream Sherlock in a top hat and bow tie, stealthy on-the-case Sherlock floating on the wings of the Belstaff, Sherlock not quite awake, all pale skin and shallow breaths – sleeping alone, waking alone, bumping into Sherlock’s memory everywhere, every day.

Always.

He meets Mary a year and a half after Sherlock falls, and they are soon married without fuss or fanfare. She loves him. Oh, how she loves him. And he loves her, as much as he is able, and their life is quiet, and private, and as normal as John’s life has ever been. 

But there is a dragon sleeping beside him, and the heart of a warrior within him. His bride has secrets, secrets she will kill to hide. There is subterfuge, and blackmail, and it is like living again, living with Sherlock, living in the murky twilight between sunshine and shadow. 

He doesn’t know – he never suspects – that Sherlock is alive, until he walks into Magnussen’s office, gun drawn, and sees him fall.

He aims. And fires.

A gentle squeeze of his trigger finger. A killing shot. And it is all over as the masked assailant crumples and falls, as he rushes to Sherlock’s side.

It is all over, and only just beginning.


	10. Chapter 10

Mary is not answering the phone, is not responding to his texts.

Sherlock is in surgery, and they won’t let him in. _Sherlock_ is in surgery. Sherlock is here, down that corridor, through those double doors. Sherlock is not dead (not dead, not dead).

(Mary is not answering the phone.)

Sherlock’s blood is on his hands, tangible evidence of an inconceivable miracle. There’s a bullet in Sherlock’s chest, and icy fingers of fear grip John’s heart as he stares at his mobile, paralyzed by the impossibility of this day, this hour, this minute. He has been rendered mute, Sherlock miraculously returned then ripped from his grip, his hands lifted from the beloved chest (pale, thin, breath wheezing through the torn lung) as the medics took over. He’d followed them, shouting his credentials until they allowed him in the ambulance, paying no attention to the assailant he’d shot, to the crumpled form, cold and still beside Magnussen’s desk. Didn’t notice – didn’t care – that Magnussen had vanished before help arrived. Magnussen had been his game – confront the blackmailer, end this cat and mouse – but now is forgotten, nothing, as his soul mourned and rejoiced and hoped…hoped. His eyes – his hands and heart and mind and soul – were on Sherlock. Only on Sherlock as he punched 999, dropped the phone on Sherlock’s chest and shouted into it as he pressed both hands over the oozing wound.

Blood. So much blood.

Agonizing minutes, staring at Sherlock, Sherlock staring at him, then eyes fluttering closed, breathing slowing, slowing, slowing.

John sinks to the floor against the corridor wall as a door at the far end swings open and quiet voices echo around him. Words whisper in the air – _shot_ and _dead_ and _John_ and _masked_ \- and John looks up as Lestrade slides down to sit beside him and Mycroft – face grey, stance wooden - looks more human than John has ever seen him.

No one speaks. Mycroft offers John a bottle of water.

He accepts it with shaking hands, drinks it greedily, chokes and coughs.

They wait in silence.

John doesn’t ask Mycroft if he knew. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.

The air around them burns with tension. Beside him, Lestrade rests his hands on his knees and stares ahead. He looks at his mobile occasionally, and once picks it up and disappears down the corridor, reappearing five minutes later, face grave. He shakes his head minutely at a questioning look from Mycroft, then slides down the wall to once again sit beside John. He rests his head against the wall and stares at the ceiling.

It is a long wait. 

John breathes. If Sherlock dies – if he dies again – all promises are off. 

He fumbles with his mobile, presses the text icon with a shaking finger. 

Nothing.

Does not see Mycroft watching him, misses the pity in Lestrade’s eyes.

By the time the head surgeon appears, Mycroft has joined them on the floor.

John is on his feet first. Lestrade struggles up and offers Mycroft a hand.

John slumps against the wall at the cautious good news – bullet removed, damage repaired. Touch and go - flat-lined, blood loss, six pints. Stable. Critical. 

They wait another hour to see him, and John holds Sherlock’s hand, and whispers softly to him, and is unashamed of his tears, not caring that Mycroft is there at the door. The relief is palpable, a warm bubble lifting him up through cold, murky water. He isn’t angry at Sherlock for leaving him – he is overjoyed that he is alive. The hole in his heart is full now, the hole he had patched with Mary.

_Mary._

Lestrade takes his arm as he leaves to phone her again, and leads him to a private room where tea is set out on a table.

The room where John is told he’s killed his wife.

Who is not answering her phone. Who is not returning his texts.

Who could not have shot Sherlock.

Who is at yoga class.

Who is three months pregnant.

The undercurrent tugs at his legs, water fills his lungs. He cannot breathe. His ears pound, his vision blurs as tendrils of seaweed wrap around his neck. He is sinking into the depths, mermaids pulling him down.

He crumples. 

Lestrade catches him as he falls, helps him into a chair, then nods at the door where an officer waits.

How tidy. How neat. Sherlock back, Mary gone, the child gone. No entanglements, no divorces, no custody arrangements.

No blackmail, no photos, no secret past to expose, no subterfuge.

Sherlock balanced on the knife’s edge, Mary’s bullet in an evidence bag in Lestrade’s pocket. 

The door opens behind John’s back. It is another officer, here to take John’s statement. Lestrade stands against the wall, silent and still, while John answers questions, sick with the conviction that he should have gone to the police earlier, not tried to puzzle this one out himself, not tried to be Sherlock and put things to right with his brilliant deductions and insight by stealing back the photos or documents or whatever the fuck Magnussen was holding over Mary’s head.

The past was the past was the past was the past.

Was Sherlock – all the pasts, all the futures. 

Mycroft is next. He slides a dossier across the table and waits while John, now drinking the tea someone has placed at his elbow, thumbs through it, overwhelmed, grief-stricken. It takes him only seconds to understand, but he doesn’t want (doesn’t need) the details and closes the file, pushes it back toward Mycroft and with his nod, everyone else leaves the room.

They stare at each other for a long moment. 

John has only one question.

Why?

Why didn’t you tell me? About Sherlock…about Mary. Why did you let me marry her? Why did you let me grieve? Why the FUCK did you let me love her when Sherlock was alive?

The hurt, the anger, bleed through his skin, staining him. He is standing on a narrow shelf between two walls, precariously balanced as they move slowly apart. He has to choose – one or the other. Lean against a wall or stay balanced in the middle.

He chooses a wall, a crumbling wall, no longer structurally sound. Full of crevices and crannies, constructed of marble but fissured, broken. A great work of art, set in time by the Grecian gods, weathered by wind, smoothed by sand.

He chooses Sherlock and his hands grasp the stone as the floor falls away from beneath him. He hangs on to the one constant in his life – he has been betrayed, but he knows what is his.

His breaths even out as he finds firm footing.

“I have only two requests,” he says at last, meeting Mycroft’s eyes. “All decisions regarding Sherlock’s health and care are mine. Officially and practically.”

He holds Mycroft’s eyes until he nods and says “And?”

“Please – please don’t tell him she was pregnant.” His voice catches but he hardens his heart, tucks the child that will never be inside a father’s heart that never was.

Mycroft’s eyes soften. “He will find out,” he replies. His voice is soft. There is something there that makes John’s resolve stumble– pity, perhaps. Sentiment.

“From me,” John says. He closes his eyes. “In time.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock wakes.

Sherlock has lived a dozen lives and died a dozen deaths. He has faced adversaries more powerful than Mary Morstan Watson, more deadly, more evil. 

But he has never faced one who loved John Watson, who was determined to _keep_ John Watson. No matter the cost, no matter the consequences.

He had no time for regrets, for apologies, for deathbed confessions when she squeezed the trigger. She gave him no chance to plead for his life – her decision was made before he raised his hands.

He doesn’t remember falling, has no recollection of John’s face desperate above his own.

To wake again is a dream, blurred at the edges. 

Someone is speaking, voice low, hardly registering over the roar in his ears.

Sensation slowly awakens. Leaden limbs. Weight on his chest. Lungs that fill with air then deflate again against his will.

Throat dry. Mouth dry. He is thirsty.

He opens his eyes to find himself staring at the stars in a clear night sky, unobstructed by trees or walls or city lights. The floor rocks and rolls beneath him, a mad to and fro that somehow puts tortured mind and body at ease. He is weak, powerless. His head rests on a cold lap, and rough hands stroke wet curls back from his face. 

His limbs are leaden. There is a weight on his chest. His lungs struggle for air. 

He coughs, vomits water, brackish and vile, coughs yet again. A hand rests on his forehead, tactile, comforting.

“You’re going to be alright. It’s alright. Everything’s alright,” whispers a voice he knows well. “I’ve got to get us to shore now – won’t be long so rest easy. Rest easy.”

Lips press against his forehead, move gently to his temple. They burn a brand on his skin, fiery and deep.

He turns his head and breathes in John. Remembers the terror of the sea swallowing him, of the certainty that he was dying. He died. He swears he died there, lungs full of seawater, the grating nothingness of a life unrealized, the canopy of brilliant stars kissing the lid of his coffin.

John is rowing. He feels the movement of his arms, how his thigh tenses beneath his cheek. His trousers are wet and rough, fabric straining and scraping against his face as he pulls the oars against the stormy sea. Sherlock gazes skyward, at constellations familiar and comforting, the stars that have been his trusted wayfarers, his companions in kind, through all of his tortured life. They are pale points of light, vague presences only, when held up beside this moment in time. 

This sea. This boat. 

This man.

He turns his head to breathe in the scent of John, and closes his eyes, and sleeps.

ooOoooo

“Sherlock…goddamnit Sherlock. Open your eyes.”

The voice – he knows the voice. It’s been such a long time – such a very long time – but it sounds like heaven, tastes like happiness.

Feels like home.

A warm, calloused palm presses against his as fingers thread through his and squeeze.

He hurts. Everything hurts. His limbs are leaden. His chest is heavy. Lungs seem to move on their own accord, without effort or aim. 

“Open your eyes, Sherlock. Please.” The fingers squeeze his again as lips – warm and dry – press against his forehead. “Jesus, Sherlock. _Look_ at you. You look like you haven’t eaten in weeks.” The fingers are in his hair now, carding through his curls, pushing it back from his eyes. “You need a haircut, you idiot. You fucking idiot.” A strangled sob. “You almost _died_. Again.”

He rolls his head to the side, presses his head against those fingers. He wants to purr. He wants to open his eyes. He wants the pain to stop – John’s pain, John’s agony.

“Sherlock?” John’s voice is closer, softer, spoken in his ear. Spoken just for him. Imploring him. “Open your eyes, Sherlock. Open your eyes.”

ooOOOoo

Sherlock opens his eyes and blinks, eyes slowly adjusting to the muted lantern light.

He’s fallen asleep again, on his self-appointed watch. He groans and sits up on the narrow cot, then hauls himself to his feet. His bladder is full – he needs to relieve it soon – but he drops tiredly to his knees beside John’s cot first and lowers his hand onto his forehead.

It is nearly a ritual now, one he performs dozens of times a day as John hangs on by a frayed thread to life in this mediocre army field hospital in Shiloh. 

Sherlock’s face lights up with a brilliant smile. Sherlock is not a God-fearing man, but he blesses the darkness as a hot tear rolls down his dusty face.

For the first time in these tortured weeks, John’s skin does not burn to the touch. 

The fever has broken.

John groans in his sleep, and Sherlock looks furtively around him. All is quiet, all is still as he threads his fingers with John’s, then bends his head to press reverent lips against the once-fevered skin.

John wakes before the morning light breaks and turns his head to look at him with tired eyes that remember. Remember not just where they are, and who they are, but who they were, and where they’d been. Sherlock has never come this close to losing him so soon. He will not make the same mistake he’s made before, and die alone, or watch John love another.

ooOOOoo

They disappear together into the West, and the young widow grieves the death of her husband, but John has known her only a few years, while he’s known Sherlock forever.

ooOOOoo

Sherlock opens his eyes.

The room is dimly lit. Machines whir. The ventilator lets out a rhythmic breath of air. He hears fading footsteps behind him, in the corridor, the rustle of fabric, the click of heels approaching, passing.

His limbs are leaden. Pain is beginning to blossom in his chest, his lungs. He panics, struggles for air, lets out a groan that comes out as gurgle. 

“Hey – hey. Sherlock – calm down. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

_John!_ he wants to scream into the here and now, into the sterile air of this twenty-first century hospital with crisp sheets and state-of-the-art equipment and surgeons in masks and gloves.

John’s hand closes around his own. It is his anchor, and Sherlock doesn’t drift.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock wakes and John is always there. Until Sherlock wakes, and he isn't.

John is barely holding on. 

Mycroft is a presence just beyond his peripheral vision, unobtrusive, muted voice conferring with the medical team in the corridor. He walks into the room now and again, passes John a sandwich, a mug of tea. John is stretched too thin to ponder the significance of this, that it is Mycroft himself and not Anthea or another aide caring to keep John fed and hydrated. When John leaves to stretch his legs or use the loo, Mycroft himself sits beside Sherlock’s bed and stares at his brother, his face stoic, impassive, until John returns.

John does not know what Mycroft is thinking, feeling. Nor does he care.

He just needs Sherlock to wake up.

He’s tried – twice now – eyes moving behind papery eyelids, throttled moans around the intubation. He’s pushed against John’s fingers with his toes, pressure so light it could be excused for reflex. John takes his hand in his own, laces his fingers with the long, graceful artist’s fingers of Sherlock’s hand, and cards his other hand through Sherlock’s hair. 

“You need a haircut, you idiot. You fucking idiot.” He lets out a strangled sob as he recalls Sherlock’s bloody chest (body broken on the pavement, still and cold in his curtained bed, asleep on the ocean floor). He lowers his voice to a whisper. “You almost _died_. Again.”

Beneath his hand, Sherlock’s head turns marginally – deliberately? – toward him.

“Sherlock?” John leans forward, brings his hand down to cup Sherlock’s face. “Open your eyes, Sherlock. Damn it - open your eyes.”

Sherlock’s eyes blink open.

John’s heart skips a beat, then two. He wonders, in an out-of-body sort of way, if he’s dying. If his heart will never start again. If he’ll fall here – right here – lost in Sherlock’s eyes. 

The soul-deep connection sparks when Sherlock’s eyes recognize John’s features. He groans, but it is more a gurgle. His eyes look fearful as he registers his surroundings.

“Hey – hey. Sherlock – calm down. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

John’s hand closes around Sherlock’s. He wants to weep when Sherlock’s fingers weakly grip his own.

ooOOOoo

Recovery is slow.

Reality is painful.

Sherlock wakes early in the morning while all is dark and quiet. Ghosts of the past escape his fractured mind palace and gather in the shadowed corners of the room. Days have passed since he opened his eyes, quiet, painful days, drifting out and drifting in, feeling John’s hand, trying to form words, watching John through heavy-lidded eyes as he studies monitors and dials up his morphine drip. 

His mind is clearer now, wide awake at last in this eerily silent room where moonlight seeps through the window and frosts John’s hair with silver light. John is asleep in the armchair, curled in on himself like a cat. Sherlock watches his chest rise and fall, studies his face, the stubbled jaw, the shadowed eyes. This is John. His John. The reason he left. The reason he returned. The reason for everything.

He’d known John had moved on. He’d known about Mary. Mycroft had warned him, but he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t safe. He needed more time. 

To save John, he’d let him go.

He studies John’s face, soaking it in. Vaguely wondering, through his morphine coloured dreams, what life will be like with him, but without him. The presence of the other is heavy on his soul.

There have been other Marys, other partners, other wives. He’s survived the deprivation before.

But never – never – after tasting the fruit of the forbidden tree.

And for the first time since the bullet with his name on it left Mary’s gun, he allows himself to remember.

He’d tried to get to Magnussen before John did. He’d miscalculated, had not expected Mary to get there first. And how could she perceive him as anything _but_ a threat? Her pallid, determined face. Her steady hand. He knew what she was – who she was – what she’d done. What she was capable of doing. 

John must know. Sherlock has seen the despair in his eyes, the sadness just behind the hope. It will all turn to anger soon enough, when the danger has passed, when he’s out of hospital, when John looks back and considers what Sherlock has done.

Leaving him. The black marble tombstone. A farce of a death to mock all the deaths that came before.

John sighs and stretches. His tired eyes open, and regard Sherlock sleepily in the near-dark.

His lips stretch slowly into a gentle smile. He blinks away sleep, and sits up, reaches for the cup at the bedside, lifts it to Sherlock’s lips and lets him swallow, then leans in to kiss him. This is no press of lips against his forehead, no chaste kiss to his cheek. John’s lips cover his own, warm and welcoming. The smile is in his eyes. Anger is left for another day.

“Pain?” He holds up the fingers of one hand. “How bad? Five? More?”

Sherlock holds up five fingers. Speaking is not easy. He is short of breath, and while he’s off the ventilator, he’s got oxygen, and his throat is still swollen from the intubation. He wets his lips, and John takes his hand. They lace their fingers together, and Sherlock’s broken heart revels at this oh-so-ordinary gesture.

ooOOOoo

A week and a day and John is not there when Sherlock wakes.

He stares at the empty chair. John is not in the corridor or using the loo. The chair is cold, John’s impression in the cushions faint and fading. 

Mycroft waits until Sherlock is clean and fed and reclined and horribly bored. It is through extreme diligence and a bit of coercion that Sherlock has not had access to television, or newspapers, or the internet. 

So it is that Sherlock learns that Mary Watson is dead, that John shot and killed her mere seconds after her bullet hit Sherlock. That John did not know who she was. That there is an inquest that could not be avoided, and John is there now, and all will go well – Mycroft has made sure of that – but that John himself may not be well, and will most certainly be affected, whatever the outcome.

Sherlock closes his eyes before Mycroft rises to leave.

“The papers have hold of it, Sherlock. Of John’s involvement. As of this morning. I did what I could but it’s been more than a week now. I am assured by your medical team that you are well enough to handle this. And well enough at least to understand that you cannot leave this hospital. Not for any reason. Not for a very long while.” 

Sherlock does not open his eyes as Mycroft leaves, does not acknowledge his brother’s touch on his shoulder, the barest of squeezes, meant to be comforting, taken – intellectually – as such. He lets the information his brother has conveyed percolate, trying to strip it of emotional context. He realizes that the task is impossible. The information _has_ no meaning without the accompanying emotion. Without the _sentiment_ he once despised. 

Mary Watson is dead – shot seconds after her bullet felled Sherlock.

Shot by John.

Who did not know he had just shot his own wife.

Who immediately went to Sherlock. Who dialed 999. Who pressed his hands against the wound and slowed the bleeding and gave the medics his medical history and blood type. Who saved his life.

Who asked for one more miracle while his wife bled and died on the other side of the room.

Mary is dead. He should be relieved. Overjoyed. 

(But she was there for John when he was not. She loved him, and he loved her in return.)

Mary is dead.

And like the charred remains of the girl soldier, scratched into their skin, dust beneath their feet, she will always be with them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In hospital, before he woke, Sherlock dreamed of other possible trajectories. Now, six months after he was shot, John and Sherlock embark on a trip to revisit their pasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter explores - as best I am able - the possibility of time as non-linear. Just as present is influenced by the past, in the reality Sherlock saw before he woke, the present can influence the past. John's suicide in Oslo after Sherlock's drowning in their previous life is fundamental to this chapter. Take from it what you will - it's a difficult concept on a good day. 
> 
> One more chapter...not at all as ethereal and confusing as this one might be.

Sherlock has too much time to think. He has an idea, and he will not let it rest.

It is expensive, and exhausting, and exhilarating, and entirely too soon.

Sherlock isn’t well enough. He’ll never be well enough, if John is to be believed, not after five years, or two years, and most especially not after six months. Sherlock, however, has had quite enough of hospitals and treatments and therapy and _resting_ and _taking it easy._ He hasn’t had a cigarette since the day he was shot, hasn’t been to a single crime scene, has slept more than he has – collectively – in the past two years. John points out that it’s only been a few weeks since he’s made it up the seventeen stairs into 221B without getting winded, but Sherlock persists in the fantasy that they’re heading off on a six-continent tour with about as much planning and preparation as running out for groceries.

Still, somehow, John finds himself on a plane beside Sherlock, in a cab in Melbourne, sleeping off the long trip in a soft bed in a dark hotel room. It is a trip to face the shadows of the past, to ponder what-ifs and might-have-beens, to put ghosts to rest. He is not eager to start this journey – his life, these past months, has been a study in shadows, less a roller coaster ride than a terrifying trip through a fun house with distorted reflections, rooms with no exits, floors that drop out from beneath your feet. This life is quite enough, and he’d rather not visit the places of their pasts, nor deliberately call to mind their shared tragedies.

But Sherlock will not be silenced, and John cannot help but give him voice.

Beside him, in the quiet hotel, Sherlock rests but does not sleep. His breathing is even as he lies on his back, head and shoulders propped on several pillows. One hand rests on his stomach, the other covers John’s hand on the bed, thumb rubbing rhythmically over the dip between thumb and forefinger. 

Sometimes – sometimes he wishes he could be more like John. Sturdier. More stoic. Movement and action and emotions and…normal.

Though he knows, in his heart of hearts, that John is as far off the bell curve as is he himself.

They’ve just spent twenty hours on two planes, and John is giving in to what his body demands. He’ll be rested, hungry, perhaps even excited now that they’re aground here, in Melbourne.

Sherlock stares at the ceiling. He vibrates with suppressed energy. The very air here, like the earth beneath them, holds their history, their past, their memories.

But memories will wait. They’ve waited a hundred years already. 

Sherlock closes his eyes and begs elusive sleep to come.

ooOOOoo

The district has changed. There are cabs and cars and buses and stoplights. More streets, and so many lights, so many people. Yet, when they approach, they are as sure-footed and confident as the locals, navigating on autopilot, without thought or directions or modern technology. The Princess Theater is as she always was, gold and glory, despite the years, and they pause when she comes into sight. John has been trying _not_ to remember, as he always does, but even more deliberately these last hours, more purposefully keeping his mind on the here and now. Ghosts haunt him more readily than they do Sherlock, and he goes through life with eyes forward to avoid their pull.

It is nearly time already when they arrive. They have good seats, for an excellent show, but John doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t understand why this is so important to Sherlock. He is on a linear trajectory still, one life following the last, and Sherlock wants to be sure – very sure – before shaking that solid and comforting foundation.

The theater is alive around them. The air is the same air they breathed here in their day, the stage and the curtains, the far reaches of the vaulted ceiling. A seat is still left empty for the resident ghost, and John, finally, relaxes into the undeniably familiar, and reaches for Sherlock’s hand.

Here, in this place where a century ago he came with his new wife and locked eyes with the brilliant young actor who had set the city afire.

Perhaps the simple act of holding hands is all that is needed to free the past, to unchain the slithering shadows that follow them from life to life. Sherlock, in his near-death, in the moments before waking to John’s voice and John’s eyes, has seen the impossible trajectory. Time as tide, rolling forward and back, an endless well of possible trajectories and directions and outcomes. The wave they’re riding in this madness of aborted lives is tragic and short. They are the patron saints of fear and self-doubt, men on unequal footing.

John’s hand remains in Sherlock’s for the entirety of the performance. He recalls the siren call of Sherlock’s eyes a hundred years ago, how easy it was to forget his bride beside him. Today, there is no forgetting why he is here, or with whom.

After Melbourne there is Buenos Aires, then a town in Mexico built on the side of an extinct volcano. They travel from Mexico to Shiloh, battlefield-turned-park, where they gaze quietly at monuments and walk the solemnly familiar fields. Where ghosts pass through them, and shadows dance beside them, and Sherlock stands behind John at the memorial for John’s division, the Illinois 48th, arms around him, chin on his shoulder, shrouding him, breathing in the clear air of the crisp morning. 

John’s name is not on the list of casualties. 

A mistake, an oversight. Records were spotty then. So many soldiers. So many deaths.

John traces the names of his comrades and stoically swallows his tears.

They drive to New York, where they tug memories and ghosts from a bygone era, then fly off to St. Petersburg, to Mongolia, to Egypt.

Sherlock is tired. John sees it, and feels it, but if he’s found what he’s after, he hasn’t told John. It’s sleuthing, a riddled case, clues fettered by time, asleep beneath the ages. Florence and Rome, then France, where it all began. Sherlock spends hours lying on the banks of the river, head in John’s lap, freeing old sorrows as the Maid of Orleans shimmers on the water.

And finally, finally, they are in Oslo. 

As days have worn on, as they retrace their brokenness, John has begun to understand. 

It is not enough that they have finally broken free – this John, this Sherlock, these men of this century in this moment. As Sherlock now sees it – in his brilliant mind with his unerring capacity to think and reason and deduce and sort and calculate – the past is not static, not a closed book. It’s fluid, a web of possibilities, ebbing and receding like the tide. 

In Oslo, it is John who takes the lead.

For Oslo is John’s Waterloo, and here, especially here, in the hazy moments before opening his eyes in hospital, Sherlock has seen what might have been – could have been – what most certainly _was_. 

For someone. Somewhere. Some time.

John is ill – sick to his stomach – as they walk toward the wharf. His hands are buried deep in his pockets, fingertips as icy cold as the blood in his veins. Sherlock is the only thing warm in this world. He walks at John’s right, matching his steps to John’s shorter stride, slowing his pace as John falters, steels himself, then carries on.

He stops at a place that feels familiar, a rocky point where the waves crashing and gulls calling are muted by the roar in his head. 

He’s not sure what is supposed to happen here. It’s the same place, but with none of the sorrow, none of the melancholy, none of the regret of the past. He stands, no longer alone, with Sherlock’s arms around him. Arms that tighten, voice murmuring in his ear. “Listen.”

John listens.

“Close your eyes, John. Feel them. _Listen_.”

Sherlock’s voice is a susurration. A whispered caress. Liquid love. Slow fire crawling through his veins. 

He hears, and feels, and sees. Past, present, future. How it was. Is. May be.

The dip of oars. The long scrape of wood and metal on the rocky shore. Two figures huddled together, voices muted by the wind. A small boy runs before them, picks up a pistol edging along the sand with the pulsing waves. He laughs, handles it carelessly, pretends to shoot seagulls, then tosses the weapon into the water. He picks up a rock, examines it, drops it into his pocket and runs into the fog of memory where two men, wrinkled and grey, stand at the edge of the ocean, and one, holding a pipe, points with it toward the sky. John can smell the smoke as it wafts in the air above their heads, can see the constellations in the sparkling night sky reflected in their eyes. 

And finally, as he struggles with what this means, with what is real, and what is not, Sherlock’s arms tighten around him. And he is there, at the water’s edge, knee-deep in the cold North Sea, shoulders shaking violently as he pulls a gun from his pocket. Dumbly he watches as this other self stares at the gun, and his knees are weak with relief when he throws it by the barrel far into the waves.

The child is back, pretending to fly like a sea bird, flapping his arms and calling out ‘til the man he might have been, the man he was, the man he is, scoops him up and onto his shoulders.

And with a last fond look at the heavens above, a fervent wish upon a star, they fade away.

When it’s all said and done, there is sea, and there is sky, and there is Sherlock. 

It is more than John can explain, nearly too much for him to comprehend. He feels enormously small, immensely insignificant before this twisted, rippled fabric of time. They stand on a pivotal moment, where paths converge and splinter, where one man holds a gun to his head and another tosses it into the sea.

Where both exist, or did, or someday will.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remembering, forgetting and moving on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The structure of this chapter juxtaposes an important event in John and Sherlock's relationship a year after Sherlock is shot with the fall-out of their six-continent pilgrimage and confrontation of their many pasts.

In the space of a year, everything changes.

Memories, so fresh when they return from Oslo, begin to mellow. The lingering ghosts slowly fade away as the distance between their pasts and their present lengthens. Sherlock’s introspection, his obsession with deducing the riddle of their existence, diminishes without either of them consciously noting it, giving way to a resurgence of some of his older, more endearing habits like procuring body parts from Molly and leaving the milk on the counter to spoil. The melancholic weight John has carried with him since their six continent pilgrimage begins to dissipate as the needle of time once again points irrevocably forward instead of spinning randomly like a broken compass. Life hasn’t exactly returned to normal – there is another weight on John’s shoulders, one he never mentions – but slowly, gradually, they regain lost footing and learn to navigate this life together again. 

In time, Sherlock can climb the stairs to 221B without getting winded. A year after Mary Morstan put a bullet in Sherlock’s chest, Lestrade finally convinces John to allow Sherlock to take a case. Sherlock is uncharacteristically tentative until John joins him at the crime scene after work, then he lights up with remembered joy and the game is on. Three days later, they’re in the thick of it again. Sherlock escapes a burning building on a shaky trellis, and drags John to safety when he jumps from a second floor window. Later, in the ambulance, John – who most certainly is concussed and very likely has a broken leg – grins when Sherlock complains about the thorns in his hands (and arms and legs and most decidedly his groin), and seems more amused than upset at Sherlock’s predicament. He’s high on adrenaline, and they’re both giggling when the ambulance doors open and Mycroft – waiting outside with mobile to ear – shakes his head almost fondly.

John is forced to hobble around on crutches for weeks as his leg heals, and midway through his convalescence, Sherlock’s libido – lost somewhere between his body leaving the roof of Bart’s and hitting the floor of Magnussen’s office, makes a sudden and very welcome reappearance. It happens most unexpectedly, as Sherlock walks past the bathroom while John is bathing, leg in its fiberglass cast propped carefully on a towel on the edge of the tub. The door is open only an inch or two, just enough for Sherlock to peek in to make sure John hasn’t drowned, and Sherlock catches movement from the corner of his eye, and pauses to watch John stroking himself languidly, eyes closed, head resting on the back of the tub. 

It has been enough, John claims, to hold Sherlock, to share a bed, to spoon behind him as they sleep. It is more than he’d ever expected, isn’t it, and as much as Sherlock’s compromised body can handle, as much – he says – as he can give these days. Mary hangs between them, and the child John never acknowledges, and the year John spent in her bed, making love to her when Sherlock was dead and gone.

_(John and Sherlock forget Rouen and the ashes and dirt beneath John’s fingernails. But they don’t forget the feel of the other’s hands, and will always pause, hearts constricting, when the sunlight shimmers on the water.)_

Sherlock watches through the doorway now as John’s hand slowly moves, and the water undulates, and John’s face takes on a faded, far-away look. He stretches his neck and a sigh escapes him, so deep it could almost be a moan. Sherlock is frozen in place, eyes fixed on John, as he feels the stirring of arousal curling in his belly. The feeling is so foreign he doesn’t recognize it at first. John has been tolerably patient with his impotence, relieved, Sherlock thinks, not wanting to tire him, stress his compromised endurance. If stairs were nearly impossible for months, sex was simply out of the question and John seemed only too happy to take things slowly.

He’s taking things slowly now, though his cock is hard beneath his fingers, the crown pushing out of his fisted hand, deep pink, smooth. It slips back down and John squeezes again, sturdy fingers working a kind of magic he’s done for years, but that looks brand new, an act of creation, to Sherlock. He rests his head against the door frame, shifting slightly under the growing weight of his own arousal. John sighs and exhales, bites his bottom lip.

_(John and Sherlock forget Mongolia but will always stop to gaze at a cold, blue sky. Mexico – the Yucatan – is just another summer destination, a foreign place of indigenous cultures and glorious churches, but they do not remember fighting for God, and gold, and glory.)_

Sherlock breathes deeply, quietly, eyes fixed on John, on his hand, on the way his pectoral muscles flex, his biceps tighten. He is becoming accustomed to this feeling again, mind struggling and losing ground to the demands of his body. He’s half-hard, and he allows himself to lean into the wall for a taste of friction. Unconsciously, he licks his lips. They part, close, and he presses them together as John’s hand slides down to the base of his cock and lifts his bollocks, fondling each in turn, head tilted back a bit more, the look on his face utterly sculptural.

_(Rome and Florence will always be a cities of grandeur and mystery and beauty to Sherlock and John, but they hold no special memories. Russia, New York, Buenos Aires fade into history, interesting places, culturally intriguing, but part of others’ pasts, others’ presents)._

The ache is too great, the opportunity – unlooked for – too rare to pass up. Sherlock quietly steps out of pajama bottoms and pants and unties his dressing gown with hands that inexplicably tremble. It drops to the floor and he moves quietly into the bathroom, steps closer to the tub, eyes fixed on John’s hand sliding up his shaft, twisting over the head, working back down.

He steps quietly over John’s casted leg into the tub as John opens his eyes.

_(In later years, in their retirement, John will become obsessed with the American Civil War and will make a pilgrimage of sorts to the States, Sherlock grudgingly accompanying him. There’s a strange feeling of déjà vu as they walk the fields of Gettysburg and pause to study monuments to the regiments who fought here, but they don’t remember Shiloh, and there is no impending sense of loss.)_

They lock eyes now, and Sherlock crouches between John’s legs. John’s eyes slide down past chest and belly, and he swallows, and shifts in the tub, straightening his shoulders, scooting back to allow Sherlock more room as he kneels in the water and rests a hand on John’s knee. John’s hand is still on his cock, but it falls away as Sherlock leans forward and kisses him, then raises to dust along Sherlock’s length.

They’ve kissed these past months, but they haven’t kissed like this. John’s other hand grips Sherlock’s bicep, and Sherlock falls against him, laughing as he slides backward, kisses John’s belly, the tip of his lovely cock. 

It’s not what they want – either of them. Somehow they make it to the bedroom, John leaning against Sherlock, hopping on one foot, both of them dripping. What they want is not entirely possible given John’s injury, but they make do. John’s on his back, Sherlock straddling his chest as John prepares him, fingers shaking as desire builds. Sherlock groans and presses back against John’s fingers, ready now, ready to sink slowly down onto John’s length. 

_(Years from now, Sherlock and John will have a private box at the theater courtesy of Mycroft for a high-level top-secret investigation. The production is over-the-top, the acting superb, but they don’t think of the Princess, don’t fondly recall their time in Melbourne. Melbourne is a city on the bottom of the world, and Sherlock is not a thespian.)_

John grips Sherlock’s hips as Sherlock sinks onto him, craving the burn, the fullness, the connection. It feels so good, so right, and he loves this position, eyes locked on John’s face, John coaxing him on, fingers digging into his flesh, wet and heady and primal. _God, Sherlock. Fuck. So good, so good._

John’s hand slides to his belly, presses against it as Sherlock leans forward. They both groan at the change in angle, and John reaches for Sherlock with his other hand, grasps him, slides his fingers around and down the familiar length, learning it again. Touching Sherlock is better than touching himself; the sounds Sherlock makes ratchet his arousal until he is so close to coming that he grabs Sherlock’s hips again to still him, biting his lip and panting, willing the impending crescendo away. 

Sherlock is so ready, so hard. His head falls back and John groans and thrusts up again, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. Sherlock takes himself in hand. Three years – three years since… He tries not to think about the last time, the night before – tender, slow, subdued, an apology, a farewell.

He squeezes, pulls, as John thrusts up and it is so much, too much, not enough. Never enough. He is staring at John, who is staring at him, at the scar on his chest, at the perspiration rolling off his chin, at his star-studded eyes. 

_“John.”_

He breathes the name as orgasm hits him, dropping forward with hands braced on the bed. He is boneless, spent, but he dips to kiss John’s neck, and John groans, thrusts twice, three times, and comes with a shout. Sherlock rides it out, then falls on him, mindful of John’s leg, and lays his head over John’s heart, imprinting its rhythm on his soul.

_(Through all their lives, John will be drawn to the sea, and Sherlock to the stars. They’ll gaze into the horizon – the heavens – into nothing and everything – melancholy, together in their loneliness. Sherlock can name the constellations but does not remember how or why he knows them. John can sense the changes in weather, and in the wind._

_Neither of them remembers Oslo.)_

_Fin_


End file.
